A new area of technology with increasing importance is the domain of Workflow-Management-Systems (WFMS). WFMS supports the modeling and execution of business processes. Business processes control which piece of work of an interrelated collection of pieces of work will be performed by whom and which resources are exploited for this work, i.e. a business process describes how an enterprise will achieve its business goals. The individual pieces of work might be distributed across a multitude of different computer systems connected by some type of network.
The process of designing, developing and manufacturing a new product and the process of changing or adapting an existing product presents many challenges to product managers and engineers. These challenges may include bringing the product to market for the least cost and within schedule while maintaining or even increasing product quality. Many companies are realizing that the conventional product design process is not satisfactory to meet these needs. To meet these demands may require early involvement of manufacturing engineering, cost engineering, logistic planning, procurement, manufacturing, service and support with the design effort. Furthermore, these demands may require planning and control of product data through design, release, and manufacturing.
The correct and efficient execution of business processes within a company, e. g. development or production processes, is of enormous importance to a company and has significant influence on a company's overall success in the market place. Therefore, these processes should be regarded in a manner similar to technology processes and should be tested, optimized and monitored. The management of such processes is usually performed and supported by a computer based process or workflow management system. Some of these computer based workflow management systems include:
D. J. Spoon: "Project Management Environment", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 9A, February 1990, pages 250 to 254, describes a process management environment including an operating environment, data elements, and application functions and processes. PA1 R. T. Marshak: "IBM's FlowMark, Object-Oriented Workflow for Mission-Critical Applications", Workgroup Computing Report (USA), Vol. 17, No. 5, 1994, page 3 to 13, describes the object character of IBM FlowMark as a client/server product built on a true object model that is targeted for mission-critical production process application development and deployment. PA1 H. A. Inniss and J. H. Sheridan: "Workflow Management Based on an Object-Oriented Paradigm", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 3, March 1994, page 185, describes other aspects of object-oriented modeling on customization and changes. PA1 F. Leymann and D. Roller: "Business Process Management with FlowMark", Digest of papers, Cat. No. 94CH3414-0, Spring COMPCON 94, 1994, pages 230 to 234, describes the state-of-the-art computer process management tool IBM FlowMark. The meta model of IBM FlowMark is presented as well as the implementation of IBM FlowMark. The possibilities of IBM FlowMark for modelling of business processes as well as their execution are discussed. The product IBM FlowMark is available for different computer platforms and documentation for IBM FlowMark is available in every IBM branch. PA1 F. Leymann: "A meta model to support the modelling and execution of processes", Proceedings of the 11th European Meeting on Cybernetics and System Research EMCR92, Vienna, Austria, Apr. 21 to 24, 1992, World Scientific 1992, pages 287 to 294, presents and discussed in detail a meta model for controlling business processes. PA1 The "IBM FlowMark for OS/2", document number GH 19-8215-01, IBM Corporation, 1994, available in every IBM sales office, represents a typical modern, sophisticated, and powerful workflow management system. It supports the modelling of business processes as a network of activities. This network of activities, the process model, is constructed as a directed, acyclic, weighted, colored graph. The nodes of the graph represent the activities or work items which are performed. The edges of the graph, the control connectors, describe the potential sequence of execution of the activities. Definition of the process graph is via the IBM FlowMark Definition Language (FDL) or the built-in graphical editor. The runtime component of the workflow manager interprets the process graph and distributes the execution of activities to the right person at the right place, e. g. by assigning tasks to a work list according to the respective person, wherein said work list is stored as digital data within said workflow or process management computer system. PA1 F. Leymann and W. Altenhuber: "Managing business processes as an information resource", IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 32(2), 1994, describes the mathematical theory underlying the IBM FlowMark product. PA1 D. Roller: "Verifikation von Workflows in IBM FlowMark", in J. Becker und G. Vossen (Hrsg.): "Geschaeftsprozessmodellierung und Workflows", International Thompson Publishing, 1995, describe the requirement and possibility of the verification of workflows. Furthermore the feature of graphical animation for verification of the process logic is presented as it is implemented within the IBM FlowMark product.
For implementing a computer based process management system, first the business processes should be analyzed and, as the result of this analysis, a process model constructed as a network of activities corresponding to the business process. In the IBM FlowMark product, the process models are not transformed into an executable. At run time, an instance of the process is created from the process model, called a process instance. This process instance is then interpreted dynamically by the IBM FlowMark product.
A completely different area of technology is the area of Software Distribution Management Systems (SDMS). These systems support and ease the distribution and installation of software products on computer systems within distributed networks of heterogeneous computers. SDMS allows requests of a certain software package for a target computer system and the SDMS then delivers and installs the requested software on the target computer system. Depending on the particular SDMS one is referring to, the SDMS may also check pre- and co-requisites of the requested software, so that the requested software is operational. For instance if a certain software package is available for different processor types the correct software version adapted to the target computer system is selected. Also from multiple versions of a certain software package the one which fits into the software environment on the target computer system will be selected by the SDMS. Moreover many more dependencies with respect to the underlying hardware and software installed on the target computer system may be checked by a SDMS.
Such an SDMS is known for example from the teaching of N. Shing, et al., Software distribution system to build and distribute a software release, U.S. Pat. No. 5,495,610 issued Feb. 27, 1996 and assigned to Seer Technologies, Inc., New York. This document describes a method for creating and electronically distributing a new release of a software program in a computer system having a number of processors. One of the software programs is modified. An impact analysis is performed to identify modules to be modified as a result of the modification. The new release is stored in a central storage device. It is determined which processors require a copy of the new release, and the new release is electronically down-loaded from the central storage device to each processor.
Another SDMS is known for example from the N. R. Prager et al., Distributed Network Configuration Management Using a Subscription Method, U.S. Pat. application filed Dec. 13, 1993. This article relates to a method to support the configuration management task in large, complex, distributed networks of heterogeneous computers. A management-by-subscription paradigm is introduced that allows individual systems to express interests in receiving information like configuration information from a central configuration database storing that particular information. By subscribing to that central database the target system will be served with future distributions and updates to the subscribed information or software.
A serious drawback of many of these SDMS is the necessity to either explicitly configure these SDMS, i.e. to endow a SDMS, or a database maintained by that SDMS, with the knowledge of hardware characteristics and installed software of the target computer systems to be supported. Other SDMS leave it to the requester to perform the compatibility and consistency checks with respect to the requested software and on the available target computer systems environment.